If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, Marry women of your choice, Two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice. (4.3) പുരുഷന്‍ നാല് കെട്ടാം. എലാവരോടും നീതി പുലര്‍ത്താന്‍ കഴിയാത്ത ആള്‍ അടിമസ്ത്രീയെ വെപ്പാട്ടിയാക്കിയാല്‍ മതി. അടിമസ്ത്രീ സ്ത്രീ അല്ലെന്ന് മൌദൂദിസ്റ്റുകള്‍ വാദിച്ചേക്കാം

And give the women (on marriage) their dower as a free gift; but if they, of their own good pleasure, remit any part of it to you, Take it and enjoy it with right good cheer.(4.4) പെണ്‍പണം സൌജന്യം ആണ്. പുരുഷന്‍ തിരിച്ചു ചോദിക്കാന്‍ പാടില്ല. ഇത് സാമൂഹിക പരിഷ്കരണമാണ്.

From what is left by parents and those nearest related there is a share for men and a share for women, whether the property be small or large,-a determinate share. (4.7) മക്കയില്‍ സ്ത്രീകള്‍ക്ക് കുടുംബസ്വത്തില്‍ അവകാശമുണ്ടായിരുന്നു. ഇത് മദീനക്കാര്‍ക്കും ബാധമാക്കാനാണ് ഈ വചനം അവതരിപ്പിച്ചത്. (റിചാഡ് ബെല്‍)

If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, Take the evidence of four (Reliable) witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some way. [4.15] സ്ത്രീകള്‍ ഭോഗാസക്തി പ്രകടിപ്പിച്ചാല്‍ മരണം വരെ വീട്ടിനകത്ത് അടച്ചിടണം

If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone; [4.16] പുരുഷന്‍ ഭോഗാസക്തി പ്രകടിപ്പിച്ചാലും ശിക്ഷിക്കണം; പക്ഷേ, കുറ്റം ഏറ്റുപറഞ്ഞാല്‍ വെറുതെ വിടണം. സ്ത്രീ കുറ്റം ഏറ്റു പറഞ്ഞാലും ശിക്ഷയില്‍ ഇളവില്ല!!

O ye who believe! Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should ye treat them with harshness, that ye may Take away part of the dower ye have given them,-except where they have been guilty of open lewdness; on the contrary live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them it may be that ye dislike a thing, and Allah brings about through it a great deal of good.[4.19] പിതാവ് മരിച്ചാല്‍ പിതാവിന്റെ ഭാര്യമാരെല്ലാം മൂത്ത മകന്റെ ഭാര്യമാ‍രാകുന്ന അറബി ഗോത്രാചാരം വിലക്കുന്നതിനാണ് ഈ വചനം അവതരിപ്പിച്ചത്. മുഹമ്മദ് ഒരു സാമൂഹിക പരിഷ്കര്‍ത്താവായിരുന്നു എന്ന കാര്യത്തില്‍ തര്‍ക്കമില്ല. മതസ്ഥാപകന്റെ ചുവടുപിടിച്ച് സാമൂഹിക പരിഷ്കാരങ്ങള്‍ തുടര്‍ന്നു കൊണ്ടു പോകാനല്ല, മറിച്ച് സ്ത്രീകളെ ഭോഗവസ്തുക്കളായും അടിമകളായും മാത്രം കാണാനാണ് മതാനുയായികള്‍ ശ്രമിക്കുന്നത്.

But if ye decide to take one wife in place of another, even if ye had given the latter a whole treasure for dower, Take not the least bit of it back: Would ye take it by slander and manifest wrong?[4.20] വിവാഹസമയത്ത് സ്ത്രീക്ക് കൊടുത്ത പെണ്‍പണം വിവാഹമോചനം നടത്തുമ്പോള്‍ തിരിച്ചു വാങ്ങുന്നത് നിരോധിച്ചു. ഇതും ഒരു സാമൂഹിക പരിഷ്കാരമാണ്.

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them, refuse to share their beds, beat them; but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance):[4.34] ഇസ്ലാമിലെ സ്ത്രീവിരുദ്ധതയുടെ ഉദ്ഭവം ഈ ഖുര്‍’ആന്‍ വചനത്തില്‍ നിന്നാണ്. ഇസ്ലാമിനു മുമ്പ് അറബിഗോത്രങ്ങളിലെ സ്ത്രീകള്‍ കൂടുതല്‍ സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യം അനുഭവിച്ചിരുന്നു.

And stay quietly in your houses, and make not a dazzling display, like that of the former Times of Ignorance; and establish regular Prayer, and give regular Charity; and obey Allah and His Messenger. And Allah only wishes to remove all abomination from you, ye members of the Family, and to make you pure and spotless. [33.33] സ്ത്രീകള്‍ വീട്ടിനകത്ത് തന്നെ കഴിയണം. ഇസ്ലാമിനു മുമ്പുള്ള അജ്ഞാനകാലാത്ത് ചെയ്തിരുന്നത് പോലെ സൌന്ദര്യം പ്രദര്‍ശിപ്പിച്ച് പുറത്തിറങ്ങി നടക്കരുത്!!! (ഇസ്ലാമിനു മുമ്പ് അറേബ്യയിലെ സ്ത്രീകള്‍ കൂടുതല്‍ സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യം അനുഭവിച്ചിരുന്നു എന്നതിന് ചരിത്രപരമായ തെളിവാണ് ഈ ഖുര്‍’ആന്‍ വചനം.)

When ye deal with each other, in transactions involving future obligations in a fixed period of time, reduce them to writing Let a scribe write down faithfully as between the parties: let not the scribe refuse to write: as Allah Has taught him, so let him write. Let him who incurs the liability dictate, but let him fear His Lord Allah, and not diminish aught of what he owes. If they party liable is mentally deficient, or weak, or unable Himself to dictate, Let his guardian dictate faithfully, and get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her.[2.282] കരാറുകള്‍ ഉണ്ടാക്കുമ്പോള്‍ രണ്ട് പുരുഷന്മാര്‍ സാക്ഷിയാകണം. രണ്ട് പുരുഷന്മാരെ കിട്ടിയില്ലെങ്കില്‍ ഒരു പുരുഷനും രണ്ട് സ്ത്രീകളും സാക്ഷികളാകണം. സ്ത്രീകളെ വിശ്വസിക്കാന്‍ കൊള്ളുകയില്ലെന്നാണ് ഈ ഖുര്‍’ആന്‍ വചനത്തിന്റെ സാരം!!!

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Secular, democratic India has seen pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.The accounts of murder, arson, and crimes against women sounded horribly familiar: Each detail, each grisly fact seemed taken out of a script enacted before; the sequence of events was as predictable as the shattering, gut-wrenching climax.
It was like a macabre replay of Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984, as 43 communal violence victims from Orissa — who had come all the way to the national Capital — testified recently before the National People's Tribunal on Kandhamal headed by A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. As the narratives ended, the audience was left with another chilling thought: In secular, democratic India, there had been pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
Kanaka Rekha Nayak, from village Budedipada, spoke of her husband, Parikhita, being beaten up, murdered and quartered as her family helplessly watched (FIR no: 58 U/S 147/148/436/302/201/149 IPC, dated August 28 2008). Today, Kanaka is in hiding with her two minor children.
Priyatama Nayak, from village Barpalli, said her husband, Abhimanyu, was tied to a tree and burnt alive in her presence. Amidst religious chants the mob looted her house and destroyed it. Priyatama's young son went to the local police station and begged for help. The police reached the village 10 days later by which time dogs had preyed on Abhimanyu's body. (FIR no 90 u/s 147/148/436/506/302/149, dated August 31, 2008). And though Priyatama named her husband's killers in the FIR, the police made no arrests. In March 2009, following unceasing threats from those named in the FIR, Priyatama, who had also petitioned the Chief Minister and the Governor, took her case to the Orissa Human Rights Commission, which ordered the Kandhamal District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police to hold an inquiry into the case and take action against the errant policemen.
Twenty-four-year-old Narsingho Digal from Dudukagaon testified that a 600-strong armed gang looted and destroyed his house. His mother was gang-raped and his parents were dragged into the forests and murdered. Narasingho, who — like many other Kandhamal Christians — faces a social boycott, said the rioters had made his conversion back to Hinduism a condition for his being allowed to return to his village.
Many of the victims said they spotted Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Manoj Pradhan among the attackers. In June this year, a fast-track court in Orissa sentenced Pradhan to seven years' rigorous imprisonment.
The Orissa violence, which targeted Dalit-tribal Christians, was undoubtedly smaller in scale compared to Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984. Human rights estimates of deaths, damages and sexual violations are many times higher in all three cases, but going only by the government figures for the dead, there were 38 killed in Kandhamal in Orissa, 1,180 murdered (including Hindus killed in Godhra and in police firing) in the 15 affected districts of Gujarat, and 2,700 put to death in the national Capital. Yet despite these variations, the three pogroms could have been written, produced and directed by a single satanic mind, judging by the astonishing similarity in the detail and sequence of events and the stunning brutality of the crimes committed.
Tribunal foreword
In his November 2002 foreword to the report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, which collected 2,094 oral and written testimonies from Gujarat's victim-survivors as well as human rights groups, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer said: “The gravamen of this pogrom-like operation was that the administration reversed its constitutional role, and by omission and commission, engineered the loot, ravishment and murder which was methodically perpetrated through planned process …”
Eight years later, the jury at the Kandhamal Tribunal had similar words to say: “The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured … There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood … The jury is further convinced that the communal violence in Kandhamal was the consequence of a subversion of constitutional governance in which state agents were complicit.”
‘Action-reaction' theory
When, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination, thousands of Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi, the commonly-held view was that it was an aberration brought about by an extraordinary situation. Comparisons were made with the 1947 Partition riots but few could have known at that time that the clinically planned and executed anti-Sikh pogrom would serve as a model for two more episodes of mass aggression against minorities.
Consider the features of the 1984 violence: Indira Gandhi's assassination by two Sikh guards was the “action” which justified the “reactive” killings. Rajiv Gandhi's insensitive equation of the mob rage to tremors arising from a falling tree was taken as licence by the rioters to plunder, rape and kill. Members of the ruling establishment lent tacit support to the killings, and in some instances were seen directing the violence. The police abandoned their protective instincts, becoming either bystanders or collaborators in the crimes. The hooligans did not just kill, they used innovative techniques to kill, such as fitting burning car tyres over the necks of little, helpless children. In the days following the anti-Sikh orgy, the community was further victimised by an unwritten social boycott.
As in Delhi, so in Gujarat and Orissa. Delhi 1984 went beyond “an eye for an eye” to justify the extermination of an entire community for the perceived crimes of a handful. It established the legitimacy of the administration and the police slipping into supporting roles in mob violence. It also established that killing was not enough, killing must be perverse. In Gujarat, Muslims as a whole had to pay for Godhra. Here too, the action-reaction theory was propounded at the highest level, with the police and the administration wilfully abdicating their duties.
The testimonies recorded by the Krishna Iyer Tribunal brought out the sadistic, bestial nature of the Gujarat killings: “The widespread violence that targeted Muslims in urban and rural Gujarat was marked by utter bestiality and brutality … Evidence recorded before us shows how in the macabre dance of death, human beings were quartered and the killing protracted while the terrorised survivors looked on …” Violence over, the majority community enforced a social and economic boycott against Muslims.
In the “action-reaction” sequence in Orissa, rioters targeted the Dalit-tribal Christian community for revenge killings despite the lack of direct evidence linking the community to the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Here the Chief Minister, to his credit, did not justify the killings. On the contrary, he appeared contrite and eventually broke his ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet during the violence, the levers of administration remained cruelly unresponsive to the cries of Kandhamal's Christian citizenry. As in Delhi and Gujarat, the victims found the police curiously missing or standing by, when the mobs, armed to the teeth and shouting inflammatory slogans, went on the rampage. The torture and violence were again extreme; murder was by burning alive, by dismembering the person. And as previously, the violence was followed by a crippling social boycott.
Abuse of women
All three pogroms had another common feature: Rampant abuse of women. Women were gang-raped, invariably in front of their families, not for sexual gratification but as a demonstration of power, to heap humiliation on male relatives. At the hearing organised by the Kandhamal Tribunal, Vrinda Grover, a member of the jury, remarked that the Orissa rioters had “used women's bodies as sites for punishment.” The Hindu of September 30, 2008 reported the case of a Catholic nun who was stripped naked and brutally gang-raped in front of a police post with 12 policemen from the Orissa State Armed Police present and watching. The Catholic priest who was with her was mercilessly thrashed for refusing to participate in the atrocity. Incidents of rape in Gujarat 2002 have been too well documented to bear repetition here.
But here again, the trend was set 26 years ago in Delhi. Until recently, the dominant perception about 1984 was that the mob violence largely spared the women.
The myth was conclusively demolished in 2007 following publication of the painstakingly documented book, “When a tree shook Delhi”. Lifting the “veil of silence” over the rape cases, authors Manoj Mitta and H.S. Phoolka pieced together evidence placed before the Nanavati Commission to establish rape as a commonly used weapon in the anti-Sikh pogrom.
In one case, the rioters killed all the men in the family, raped the woman of the house in front of her young son, and left her naked so that she could not go out to save the child when he too was dragged out and burnt alive (case reported in Manushi magazine and submitted to the Commission).
The Kandhamal tribunal, as the Krishna Iyer tribunal before it, noted the “institutionalised bias of State agencies, their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence, and a deliberate scuttling of the processes of justice …” Each of the findings applied to Delhi 1984 as well.
Perhaps that is why, a questioner asked the jury of the Kandhamal tribunal, if it was not a shame that 26 years after 1984 — and two more pogroms later — India was still trying to find a solution to planned violence against minorities.
Courtesy: The Hindu